The Harry Potter Lexicon

In honor of Jo’s latest Wizards of the Month, I thought it was high time I updated my lame-o page on the Hogwarts founders. Isn’t it interesting to compare how they have been depicted?

Can anyone think of an information category that I’ve left out?

Later edit: they’ve been revised again. Apparently I missed the memo about canonical issues with Lightmaker’s images on Jo’s website. The truth is, that while the images are “official,” the degree of artistic license that Jo allows the Lightmaker artists is unknown. So they’re not canon. I’m sorry for the confusion.

The Wizard of the Month calendar on JKR.com has changed to display the wizard for July 2007 as:
Godric Gryffindor
Medieval (precise dates unknown)
One of the four famous Founders of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Godric Gryffindor was the most accomplished dueller of his time, an enlightened fighter against Muggle-discrimination and the first owner of the celebrated Sorting Hat.

This is the third Hogwarts’ Founder in a row to be honoured. Can we expect the fourth, Rowena Ravenclaw, for August?

Continuing our tradition of joining in the birthday wishes posted on Jo’s site…

The Wizard of the Month calendar has changed to Happy Birthday Dobby for June 28th.

A new book has appeared in the Links section of Jo’s website, entitled Missing Madeleine.
Please LOOK, read, and spread the word about this tragic story. We are praying for her safe return.

Editorial:
For those who would criticize Jo for giving this publicity to the plight of one little girl when there are so many other abducted and missing children in the world, how wrong can you be? Its not possible for her to aid in the cases of every missing child. The fact that she has taken up this cause, and used the extensive readership of her website to spread the word is nothing but honorable! For all of the people who have donated money or help or celebrity media coverage, it is just a matter of people doing whatever they can. No one should question their motives. Instead let’s all pray that it works. That somehow, someone, somewhere will hear this story, and realize they noticed something. Maybe someone will have a picture from the area showing nameless faces in a crowd that contains a crucial clue. Or vacationers who left Portugal behind will sift through their memories for more than remembering their trip. Or a Harry Potter fan will think of a friend who recently visited Portugal and mention this to them. Let’s hope.

Let’s think highly of Jo for offering to do all she can! And recognize that her efforts for this one little girl are not hurting the cases of other children in the same situation, but instead, perhaps, if we ALL do all we can, even as strangers, a little girl somewhere will be reunited with her family. Madeleine and many others.

UPDATE: Friday June 29th, the text of the Missing Madeline page was edited to note her disappearance took place eight weeks ago.

I received an email from the producer of the television special I filmed a few weeks ago in LA. He tells me that the show, entitled “The Hidden Secrets of Harry Potter,” will air on A&E on July 8 at 10 pm Eastern time. Featured will be John Granger, Janet Batchler, and me. The producer goes on to say that A&E is very excited about the show and he expects that they’ll air it over and over between July 8 and the release of the new book. I hope you all get a chance to see it.

We haven’t talked much about the Portkey lately, what with the lead up to the new film and book and game and soundtrack and who knows what all. However, the team has been working dilligently behind the scenes, adding more and more content. Here are a few cool new additions:

The book Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is now completely entered. As with the Bestiary in the Lexicon, we have intentionally NOT included all information about each beast so that our site doesn’t discourage anyone from buying the book itself. Of course, as part of the Portkey, the fantstic introductory material is now included when you search for information.

All the Famous Wizard cards are now entered. We changed the format for the “Location in canon” tab to show where you’ll find that particular card: in an EA game, in the book, on JKR’s site, etc. We’re working on adding all the card images to the image database, too.

Every event from each novel has been entered. You can now generate a very thorough outline of a book from the Book Outlines menu item at the top of the Portkey page. We haven’t added all the locations, characters, tags, date/times, and icons to them, however. The team is working on it steadily. But why wait for them? Log in and start adding some tags yourself! Oh, and when you select a book outline, notice the chapter summary entries. They appear nowhere else. They’re really cool, particularly because they show the entire chapter’s commentary and images at once on the tabs.

I do want to encourage everyone to add tags to the Portkey. The more user-added tags there are, the more useful and complete the Portkey will be. You do need to create a user account to do this and you need to be 13 or older. Any tags entered by fans will be searchable just like the tags added by our team, so have at it!

Lately I’ve receieved a few emails along these lines:

hey, the lexicon is a great site and i love reading almost everything on it. however a lot of the stuff is outdated - there are questions and debates on stuff that has been answered in later books, details tht have been mentioned in the order of the phoenix and half blood prince. it would be brilliant if the pages were updated, as opposed to being like 3 years old. but its a great website. thanks

We completely agree that it would be brilliant if everything was updated. Trouble is, there are about a thousand pages in the Lexicon and a complete update will be a LOT of work. We don’t want to have to do it twice. So if you’ll forgive us, we’re waiting. In a couple of weeks, with the release of the last book, we’ll start a complete update and overhaul of the entire site. We’ll revise every page with the final details, we’ll flag essays that are out of date (although we will very likely leave them in our essay collection, since they provide a record of fan history which we don’t like to see disappear). We’ll update all the pages to the new format and work on databasing everything so that it integrates into the Portkey.

If you think about it, that’s the answer to another question I get quite often: What will happen to the Lexicon after the last book? Will it go away? No, it will just become more complete, more user-friendly, more integrated, and more the best Potter reference source on the planet.

So please be patient. I apologize for things which are out of date or incomplete. We’ll get to it in just a few weeks.

Owls are arriving with the results of WOMBAT 3 on Jo’s official site.
Text from all certificates is now posted on the WOMBAT - results page, images on the way!

EDIT:The page is now complete with screenshots of the WOMBAT wall and images of all the certificates.

P.S. I got an E.

The WOMBAT results delivery clock on Jo’s official site shows that the Results are in the post. You can see this by clicking on the WOMBAT card and entering your Student ID code.

In the past this has meant we would receive the results within a day!

If you missed the exam, you can read the questions with our commentary here: WOMBAT grade 3

A few weeks ago, Budget Travel asked me to write an article for their website, sort of a “travel guide” to locales in the Harry Potter world. The guide is now live on their site. I think you’ll enjoy it, so wander over and take a look.

Well we’ve finally managed to post the text of WOMBAT grade 3 exam with our Lexicon staff commentary.
John Kearns joins us this time with his added insight, and Lisa returns for a second time with her perspective. Steve and I have been overwhelmed in real life the past few days, making it very difficult to find time to do the commentary. But my obligations ended yesterday, so that I was able to finish today.
Steve is still Splinched somewhere. Hope he turns up soon!

Edit: The Do not Disturb sign has returned to the Door, Monday morning, June 18. Entering your code on the WOMBAT card shows Papers Being Marked on the clock.

The door is open on JKR.com! With WOMBAT grade 3 behind it.
The Lexicon is working on our commentary as we did for the first two.
We’ll have that posted for you as soon as we can.

To open the Door and activate the WOMBAT:
1) Click on the fly that lands on the window, it will turn into a key,
2) Drag it to the lock and let go, the key will turn and the door will open.
3) Drag the ring onto the rod, it will sparkle if placed correctly.
4) Drag the triangle onto the rod and ring, it will sparkle and move to the desk.
5) Click on the WOMBAT paper to open the test.

Good Luck!

Users of VISTA will notice a new WOMBAT gadget on the desktop. We’ll have more info and screenshots for non-vista users soon!

Edit: and today, June 14th, the Daily News has been updated to announce a US tour by JKR.